I once worked for a company that didn't track their expenses too well, and we found out the maid was getting over 10K a month for working 2 hours 5 days a week. The maid.
I did the hourly break down and realized she was the highest paid person in the company (CEO included) for about a year and a half.
is there an ADP/Google Cal integration that tells you how much each meeting costs the company? (by multiplying effective hourly rate * meeting length for a in attendee)
Yes Please! A company I worked for had fortnightly OHS training on things like hydration. I back-of-the-enveloped a 5k cost in time for someone to tell us to drink some water. Not huge money and the chit-chat was nice but kind of galling when they later nickle-and-dime over providing a decent build server
I wrote a quick little web page that I'd fire up each meeting. # employees * average hourly salary * time taken in meeting... and at the end of the meeting I'd say how much that meeting cost.
Sometimes the biggest waste of money is being cheap: Penny Smart, Dollar Dumb.
Like a company that will spend a lot of money on hiring people, but won't give them a decent laptop because they had a different one from 7 years ago. Or refuses to give someone the training that they need.
Or a company that shuts the heat or AC off exactly at 5pm to save a couple of bucks on electric cost (and chase all their people out).
Keyboards, mouse, monitor too. They're dirt cheap compared to recruiting, improve productivity and the likelihood that someone is going to want to work for that company.
But IMO shutting the AC off at 5 PM might actually be good company culture to encourage everyone to get everything done by then and go home.
Yup, I've brought my own stuff in before, because it's what I wanted.
Happy that I now work at a place that isn't like that!
I could see what you mean by that, but in this instance, the owner was a notorious penny pincher. It was because he was cheap. This was also back in the early 2000's when the company culture was that of drinking during work on Fridays. You may think it was the 80's... everyone called the place "The Country Club"
I see a lot of early stage companies spending way too much on marketing before they have a product to launch.
Because the marketing team is ready to boom it, the product has to even more stable than it otherwise would be. So ironically, they keep adding more features and launch too slowly. Or they could have some fixed launch date and developers end up hacking in buggy features to meet a deadline. The pressure costs a lot more in terms of engineering as well.
I've seen some budget around $50k marketing to get around 1,000 downloads.
Once worked for a company where the founder had an idea for a new software product. He hired a friend to be the product manager who then hired a project manager to manage a team of three programmers and two architects who didn't agree on anything. When the project failed to meet a founder set deadline, the project manager was fired and a new one hired. In the space of 18 months the company went through 5 project managers. At that point I resigned, couldn't handle the constant changes that each project manager brought in. I met the product manager at a conference 5 years later and they had only just released the "product".
In Germany there's lots of paranoia, some justified and some not, about the NSA/Patriot act/etc. that leads to complete avoidance of American service providers and clouds. I've seen German companies at small scale doing mundane things running everything under the sun themselves like it's 1999, and with security infrastructure and procedures fit for a bank, protecting a small amount of uninteresting data.
I would not call that a waste. The US has one of the most hostile governments regarding tech. It may feel wasteful now but being self-reliant (and having the knowledge of how to be) frees those companies enormously.
And, yeah. Monopoly positions are toxic too. So curbing that is also of value not only to Germans but to all foreign states.
Technology trainings that are irrelevant to our products.
I understand it's good to train employees to give them more value, but the things their being trained on aren't relevant to our work, and then quit to use those skills at a competitor.
Now before you get upset, my company spends thousands of dollars a month on shitty coffee beans, rented coffee machines, and a monthly cleaning service for those machines. They purchase Peet's coffee which is expensive but tastes like brewed cigarette butts and brew it in standard drip coffee machines that cost the equivalent of 3 new coffee machines each month. Most of the employees don't even drink the coffee, they brought their own Keurig machine and brew their own pods instead.
Sounds like a worthy point to raise. Peet’s is some truly awful stuff. When I think of it, my mind conjures images of “peat” the fertile gardening soil made from decayed vegetation.
It truly is the worst of the coffee offerings out here. When I see people in SF walking around with Peet's I always think "why?", you are literally surrounded by some of the best coffee in the world.... hell even Nestle Sell out Blue Bottle would be better than Peet's
Not paying attention to details in general, I can spend what I want on aws, I have told them I can save them thousands and no one cares until we have a bad month. On top of that 2 times a year we lose a service because a bill wasn't paid , when does it kick in that there is a problem?
Make them an offer: You'll spend your time out of normal office hours to cut down the AWS expense. Add half to your salary, they can keep the other half.
And suddenly, they'll care a lot.
We're having some struggles with this at my workplace too. Engineers and even some management I'm finding rather cavalier about cloud spends. I wish they'd be as cavalier about my salary... "yeah, sure, you want another $200K/year, no sweat, whatevs dude." You don't mind if I click a button and accidentally spend $2K/month on a system that I'm using 1% of, but when it's in my favor suddenly we can't do that.
(I'm not responsible for much in the cloud yet, but I do try to be responsible, even if for now it doesn't seem to benefit anybody. I'm sure at some point someone is going to raise hell about this and I'm not planning on being in the line of fire.)
Interns. We have a tendency to hire college kids as testers, qas, and marketing interns, and we almost always end up spending a lot of time and effort onboarding them, and managing them, and training them; then they either never become useful, or leave for something else.
Unless it's being done as charity, it's pretty pointless, for us. It just creates more work that detracts from revenue generating activity, but the boss likes having them around for some reason.
Honestly? Bringing everyone into the office. I got hired as a remote worker. About a year and a half later, they gave everyone an option: come into the office or get laid off.
They claimed we needed better communication.
Only me and one other person moved across the country. About 150 people were let go.
Got to the office.. communication still isn't that great.. it is actually about what it was before I moved, but now we talk through Slack instead of email and everyone sits a cubicle next to each other, so yeah, great communication.
As for why they spent too much money? I mean, it worked out great for me: I went from having no benefits, no bonuses, no 401k, no health insurance, no vacation time, a lower salary, and I worked from home.
Moving me into an office gave me PTO (Paid Time Off), sick days, floating holidays, health insurance, 401k, bonuses, a higher salary, and of course, the benefits of working in an office, such as parties and all that company stuff. And finally, this year, I got a new laptop!
But then again.. maybe I was a good investment? Been with the company for 5 years now.
47 comments
[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 117 ms ] threadI did the hourly break down and realized she was the highest paid person in the company (CEO included) for about a year and a half.
I couldn't believe it.
is there an ADP/Google Cal integration that tells you how much each meeting costs the company? (by multiplying effective hourly rate * meeting length for a in attendee)
there's often an annoyingly long process to get an $80 expense approved.
but you can no prob set an hour long meeting w/ 4 devs 4 PMs a few mktg managers blah blah: $1000+.
I wasn't popular. :)
Like a company that will spend a lot of money on hiring people, but won't give them a decent laptop because they had a different one from 7 years ago. Or refuses to give someone the training that they need.
Or a company that shuts the heat or AC off exactly at 5pm to save a couple of bucks on electric cost (and chase all their people out).
But IMO shutting the AC off at 5 PM might actually be good company culture to encourage everyone to get everything done by then and go home.
I could see what you mean by that, but in this instance, the owner was a notorious penny pincher. It was because he was cheap. This was also back in the early 2000's when the company culture was that of drinking during work on Fridays. You may think it was the 80's... everyone called the place "The Country Club"
Because the marketing team is ready to boom it, the product has to even more stable than it otherwise would be. So ironically, they keep adding more features and launch too slowly. Or they could have some fixed launch date and developers end up hacking in buggy features to meet a deadline. The pressure costs a lot more in terms of engineering as well.
I've seen some budget around $50k marketing to get around 1,000 downloads.
Once worked for a company where the founder had an idea for a new software product. He hired a friend to be the product manager who then hired a project manager to manage a team of three programmers and two architects who didn't agree on anything. When the project failed to meet a founder set deadline, the project manager was fired and a new one hired. In the space of 18 months the company went through 5 project managers. At that point I resigned, couldn't handle the constant changes that each project manager brought in. I met the product manager at a conference 5 years later and they had only just released the "product".
And, yeah. Monopoly positions are toxic too. So curbing that is also of value not only to Germans but to all foreign states.
I understand it's good to train employees to give them more value, but the things their being trained on aren't relevant to our work, and then quit to use those skills at a competitor.
Now before you get upset, my company spends thousands of dollars a month on shitty coffee beans, rented coffee machines, and a monthly cleaning service for those machines. They purchase Peet's coffee which is expensive but tastes like brewed cigarette butts and brew it in standard drip coffee machines that cost the equivalent of 3 new coffee machines each month. Most of the employees don't even drink the coffee, they brought their own Keurig machine and brew their own pods instead.
And suddenly, they'll care a lot.
We're having some struggles with this at my workplace too. Engineers and even some management I'm finding rather cavalier about cloud spends. I wish they'd be as cavalier about my salary... "yeah, sure, you want another $200K/year, no sweat, whatevs dude." You don't mind if I click a button and accidentally spend $2K/month on a system that I'm using 1% of, but when it's in my favor suddenly we can't do that.
(I'm not responsible for much in the cloud yet, but I do try to be responsible, even if for now it doesn't seem to benefit anybody. I'm sure at some point someone is going to raise hell about this and I'm not planning on being in the line of fire.)
They claimed we needed better communication.
Only me and one other person moved across the country. About 150 people were let go.
Got to the office.. communication still isn't that great.. it is actually about what it was before I moved, but now we talk through Slack instead of email and everyone sits a cubicle next to each other, so yeah, great communication.
As for why they spent too much money? I mean, it worked out great for me: I went from having no benefits, no bonuses, no 401k, no health insurance, no vacation time, a lower salary, and I worked from home.
Moving me into an office gave me PTO (Paid Time Off), sick days, floating holidays, health insurance, 401k, bonuses, a higher salary, and of course, the benefits of working in an office, such as parties and all that company stuff. And finally, this year, I got a new laptop!
But then again.. maybe I was a good investment? Been with the company for 5 years now.